Elisa Rusca

Swiss artist Andrea Marioni spent nine months traveling around Europe in 2016, two of those in Greece, where he visited different refugees camps and lived for a while in some of them. As often in these cases, the reasons behind this trip are multiple and not easily explainable. After all, does it really matter why someone asks him or herself about the present? Does it really matter why one wants to experience in first place a situation that is well known through the media, but feels so far away? If we really want to find a reason, the only thing that matters is how this trip is then told to the others, while it changed who did it.

​

While asking himself - and putting us in front of the question - of the role of the artist facing the human tragedy, Marioni gives voice to those that the entire world treats as un-equal, and invites us to let us be colonised by Eko towards installation of objects, sculptures, relics, fragments that have a connection with the reality of the camp, but that aren’t its truly reconstruction. Wood figurines, UNHR blankets, cups from NGOs, flowers that Marioni received by the kids of the camp: the arrangement inside and outside the gallery let the visitors create their own narration through them. 

​

​

For the exhibition in Poznan we were able to publish Marioni's journal about his experience in Eko.

​

EKO Camp, or Life in a Gas Station 

Andrea Marioni

Edited by Elisa Rusca

Printed in Poland

ISBN: 978-3-00-061856-7

Order your copy here

​

​